I'm Not Saving Myself

It's 6 a.m. I'm leaving for work.

I walk out of the front door into the morning air. The cold immediately coils itself around my ankles, my wrists, my neck, my face. The breath escapes my mouth like constantly curling fingers. It's mostly dark, but the edge of the horizon has started to burn and glow with the deep red of sunrise. As I make my way to the car, a flash of purple in the midst of all the gray and brown catches my eye.

A handful of spring flowers have popped out of the earth around the mailbox. I stop and stare at them. Even in the low light of dawn, they seem to shine bright. I stand there with the flowers, all of us shivering in the cold, and all of us quietly saying the same thing:

Spring, we're longing for you, desperate for you to come.

***

It's been a long winter--too long. In more ways than one. I don't recall ever needing spring as urgently as I have recently. I'm weary of this season, and I'm ready to move on to the next one.

Speaking of transition, I'm at a weird spot, friends.

Let me be honest--when I got married at 22, there was absolutely a feeling of relief: Oh, thank God I found my person. I do NOT want to be one of those people still looking when I'm 30. Every person who finally meets their love and walks down the aisle with them feels this, too: an overwhelmingly freeing sense that you dodged the struggling-single-person bullet. Come on, married people. You've been there.

I was there. I've felt it. I thought I was in the clear, that my worst fears about being single and alone were all but buried in the grave.

Hold the phone.

I'm in my late twenties, and I'm single again. Back to square one. Much like the characters in almost every single story the boys in my 7th grade classes write, the fear of being single and alone has come back to life, full zombie mode. Trust me--I would love nothing more than to not worry about this, not think about it, put my head down, and focus on how awesome single life can be. (And so much of it can be.)

But I do think about it. I don't live a normal life, but I have normal desires. I don't know how to reconcile those two.

My "bachelor" existence is a unique one--I'm newly single at 29, have a professional teaching career, and am a visible leader at a church of 1,400-plus people--which all means that my life is constantly under the microscope, there's hardly any public place where I'm not going to be recognized, and best/worst of all--people have supreme trust in me. People trust me with the well-being of their kids. People trust me to do my job well. People trust me as a leader. People trust me with their personal and spiritual baggage and journeys. People trust me to do the right things.

It's heavy, man. Every day, I feel insanely blessed to do what I do and have the life I live. And every day, I feel insanely burdened with the responsibility that comes with it all.

Here's a secret: I have no idea what I'm doing or how to handle it.

People who are not me have all kinds of opinions about how I should proceed with my life at this point, especially regarding the love department. If I'm really honest, I have a huge temptation to lift my holy hands up to everyone--with only two fingers raised. Know what I mean? I won't--but there are times I want to. Part of this process has involved me learning how to tune out all the noise, the voices, the opinions, the judgment. Fortunately, I have a tight team of really wise, insightful, and loving friends whom I trust with my life and who remind me what's okay to feel and what I might want to avoid. I owe a great deal to them.

There are also the friends who tell me, "You'll definitely find love again." While I appreciate the heart behind that sentiment, the truth is this: I have no guarantees about my future. Nowhere in life's rules does it state that I'm entitled to a When-Harry-Met-Sally happy ending. Good people are not promised good love lives. That leaves me conflicted. There's a part of me that's excited for the unknown, the adventure of it all. There's another part of me that has a natural desire for love. It's really easy for me to want to find a channel for that desire.

The way I see it, I essentially have three options:

1. Sit around while I hope and pray I find "real love." Which is like watching a pot of water boil. Which leads to impatience, which leads to frustration, which leads to a marathon of How I Met Your Mother, but only the episodes where Ted meets Victoria (a.k.a. depression).
2. Make it happen, Cap'n! I could jump into the first and easiest opportunities that pop up for relationships. The path(s) of least resistance. I could find myself in places I swore I'd never go looking for people (which, for me, is almost everywhere). Or to quote Death Cab, "This is the sound of settling." Bah-bah, bah-bah...

These first two don't sit well with me. The major risk I'd run (and it's not the only one) is this: I'd play into the idea that I should be saving myself, my energy, my creativity, my love for some hypothetical person or situation that may never come along.

It's easy to do. I already find myself doing it. One of my biggest problems is that I take my closest friends for granted sometimes and expend little energy to love them well--I'm short with them, I'm not fully present when I'm with them, I don't ask thoughtful questions or listen to them closely enough, I treat them like they're automatic, like they're a given in my life. I treat them in those ways, but then I think I'll magically be able to pull it all together for some pretend person I'll meet someday.

I'd be wrong.

But there's a better way, a third option, and it's a message that has been slowly sinking in for the last couple of months: Do not save myself for some hypothetical future. Love well now.

I'm prepared for the possibility that I could be single for the rest of my life. It's not what I want, but I acknowledge that it could happen. I'm not guaranteed another shot at romantic love. Heck, I'm not even guaranteed next week or tomorrow. What is guaranteed is today and the people I have in my life right now. Those people--my friends, my family, my coworkers, my students--they deserve everything I have.

I'm not going to set aside love in some reserve account--love gains no interest while it sits. Love is meant to be spent now.

The best thing I can do with my life is to love the people in it well. In every way I know how, with everything I have. There's no time to worry about next week or next fall or 2015. There is only now. I don't want to look back on this period of my life and realize that I spent it worrying and sitting on my haunches, that I wasted months or years longing instead of doing.

I have no strategy to my life other than that right now: love well. Don't hold back. Don't wait for life like it's a delayed train because I'm already on that train, and it's moving fast. I can't worry about where it will take me tomorrow. I want to make sure I don't miss what's right in front of me. Today. Now.

***

I roll the windows of my car down and let the breeze fill my car with warm air. Even through the dark tint of my sunglasses, the sun makes me squint my eyes as it floods my car with light.

It finally feels like spring, even if only for a day. It's enough to make me smile as I pull out of the parking lot and head home. It's enough that I finally feel my bones, my spirit, my heart thawing out. It's enough for now.

Vulnerability Sucks--But It's Worth It

Hello, my old heartIt's been so long Since I've given you away And every day I add another stone To the walls I built around you To keep you safe

These lyrics are from a song that I play probably once a week--"Hello, My Old Heart" by the Oh Hellos. Though they speak to me for so many reasons, they've been bringing something up for the past few weeks.

I've loved writing and posting to this blog. In the past seven months, I've churned out a pretty decent amount of posts. Some of the posts that I've written in that time span are probably the best I've done to this point. One of the biggest reasons for that is one of the most difficult to keep pulling off:

Vulnerability.

More often than not, in this space, I've laid some part of myself out for everybody to see. Thoughts, struggles, fears, the kind of things we usually keep to ourselves and only speak in hushed tones to the feathers of our pillows or the windows of our cars.

I'm going to level with you--it can really suck sometimes. It's almost always hard. And I'm almost always terrified to do it.

I'll sometimes spend days or even weeks debating with myself about whether I should post something. I'll cut huge parts out, rewrite lines a dozen times, scrap the whole thing, panic and try to recreate it, and I rinse and I repeat.

When I hit the "publish" button, or the "post" button on Facebook, it's usually while holding my breath. As soon as it goes up, I shut my laptop or turn my phone off, and I almost always immediately regret that I put it up.

I think, No, no, no. That was stupid, man. This is not a good idea. At least go back and take out that part that makes you sound like a little girl.

It can be exhausting. Do you know how much easier it would be to pop out some list posts? The Five Things I Love Most about Teaching. The Ten Coolest Places I've Visited. The Sixteen Things That Every 28-and-a-Half-Year-Old Should Know about Dating or Money or Small Dogs or Something.

It'd be so much easier than some of these gut-wrenching, vulnerable posts. And I get temped to retreat. I don't want to lay myself out anymore. I don't want any of it. I want my walls. I want my fortress. I want to be safe and comfortable there. And that would be so much nicer because there's this fear that people will see what I've laid bare and use it against me.

The problem with vulnerability is this: that fear I have--the one where I get burned--will, at some point, to some extent, come true.

I will get (and have gotten) burned by someone when I open myself up. I've already upset people with this blog. Never wanted to, never intended to, never thought I had anything controversial going on here, but it still happened. And forget about the blog for a second--I will get and have gotten burned by being vulnerable in person. Like pretty badly burned. Like this-is-your-worst-nightmare-come-true kind of burned.

The nature of being vulnerable is hard to swallow. It doesn't quite make vulnerability all that enticing.

Being vulnerable means you are completely exposed.

It means someone can reject you, and it will hurt.

It means someone can use what you reveal against you.

Vulnerability comes at a price. Always. It will cost you your pride, your security, your image, your comfort, and so much more.

Vulnerability can suck.

It only feels natural, then, to build the walls around ourselves. To protect ourselves. To keep ourselves from that terrifying question, "What will people think when they read this?" or "What will this person think if I show them who I really am?" Why risk it? Why put ourselves in a position to be rejected, scrutinized, or hurt?

Build the wall, my heart says. Build it high, build it strong. Build it three layers thick. Build, and keep me safe. Build.

But time and time again, when I start to stack those stones, I get this nudge to take them back down. And I, sometimes begrudgingly, oblige. With my fingers fresh with grit and cement, I take each stone off the wall and lay it down on the ground. And I step out again, into an open field with all sides exposed.

Why?

Because when I lower my defenses and take down my walls, at some point, someone else probably will, too. It lets us feel okay to reveal ourselves as we truly are. And that's where we make some of our deepest connections, where we grow the most, where we find healing and hope and comfort.

Many of the best conversations I've had began with me stepping out and letting someone see the Paul behind the curtain. People who were nearly strangers to me became friends. Friends became blood.

So, try as I might to resist it some days, I want to undo the work of building my walls. I want to step out into the open, expose myself to the fray of life, commit myself to the hard work of choosing the risk of heartbreak and rejection, the risk that I'll take a bullet.

And even if I do (and I will--I absolutely will take a bullet, and so will you if you do this), I'll pick myself up, clean off the blood, and I will continue this hard work.

It's worth it. It's the only way to live truly free.

***

Hello, my old heart How have you been? Are you still there inside my chest? I've been so worried You've been so still Barely beating at all

Oh, don't leave me here alone, Don't tell me that we've grown for having loved a little while Oh, I don't want to be alone I want to find a home and I want to share it with you

Hello, my old heart It's been so long Since I've given you away And every day I add another stone To the walls I built around you To keep you safe

Hello, my old heart How have you been? How is it, being locked away? Don't you worry In there, you're safe And it's true you'll never beat, but you'll never break

Because nothing lasts forever Some things aren't meant to be But you'll never find the answers Until you set your old heart free

My First Tattoo

Yesterday, I did something that will probably give my mom a migraine, or a heart attack, or the urge to have me move back in with my parents just so she can kick me back out. I got my first tattoo.

Tempted as I was to go with the lower-back butterfly, I went with this:

What follows are some of my answers to the most frequently asked questions about the tat.

Did it hurt?

Yes. That's all I'll say about that.

Does it hurt now?

Yes and no. It's not too bad--it feels like bad sunburn and bruising. Touch it, though, and you die.

Do you want another one?

As fresh as the aforementioned pain is, and considering how long it took me to arrive at this tattoo, my answer is no. At least not for a while.

Who did it?

There's this cool guy I met in the alley behind 711. He offered to give me a tattoo, and I agreed to pay him in cigarettes. Don't worry--I watched him clean the needle with a Clorox wipe.

Okay. It was this cool guy named Mike Ski. He has a place in Fishtown and does some really cool stuff. Here's his website, and here's his Instagram account. Mike made the experience a ton of fun--if you need some ink done, hit him up.

What's the story here?

I thought you'd never ask.

I've considered a tattoo ever since I was in high school. It's something I've always wanted, something I've always considered, but I couldn't decide on anything.

I wanted any tattoo I get to be something meaningful to me--it wasn't enough to look cool, or say something interesting or spiritual. After years and years of kicking around ideas that were okay but ultimately not moving enough for me to permanently ink myself, I finally stumbled on some inspiration.

I first got the idea back in January, and I thought, "Holy rip. This is it." Once I got the idea, I contacted Mike, and we got together and tossed around some ideas.

I always thought that I would want a lot of control over my tattoo--as in, "Hey. This is exactly what it looks like. Don't screw it up." With this idea, I ended up collaborating a lot with Mike. I knew I wanted trees coming down my forearm and a skyline going up my arm. It ended up being his idea to throw in the mountains (which was perfect, and I can't believe I didn't think of it) and last-minute, the sun(s) and the color. 

The suns and the color are pretty huge--my original idea was all black. When he showed me the picture, he said, "I put the sun in there because I wanted it to be optimistic." 

And I thought, "You brilliant, brilliant man." It really is perfect. I want this tattoo to be optimistic, hopeful. The color brings that out even more.

The coolest thing about this tattoo is the collaboration--I gave up my idea of "the perfect tattoo" and decided to trust Mike as an artist. The final product isn't anything like I first pictured, but ultimately, it's so much cooler and surprisingly more me than my own idea by itself. [Insert commentary about how life is like this.]

Ultimately, the tattoo is about reflecting two things I love and make me who I am--the city and the outdoors. I'm not all one or other. The top is a mix of buildings from cities I've been in and love (also Mike's idea). From left to right, they are Philly's BNY Mellon Center, NYC's Chrysler building, Pittsburgh's PPG Tower, and NYC's Empire State Building.

Separating the top from the bottom is water (Mike's idea). The bottom half is pine trees and mountains--my second home.

I love it. I love what it represents. I love that I'll be able to tell my grandkids about it and what it means to me--or anyone that asks.

Next tattoo idea? How about this:

The Michelada and the Dream Myth

After a morning in which I slept in and then recklessly mauled his neck with a set of hair clippers, my friend and I arrived hopelessly late to a popular brunch spot in Manhattan's Lower East Side which turned us down at 1:00 p.m. even though it closed at 6:00. This led to us finding Fonda, a Mexican spot down the street, and me having a showdown with a drink that I saw dancing a bit on the page of the menu:

The Michelada: Your choice of beer mixed with lime juice, hot sauce and chile rim.

My eyes gleamed with the flame of adventure. I looked at my friend and said, "I have to try this."

The waiter set down a glass of swirling crimson liquid with chile that lined the rim like glowing embers. He poured a bottle of Pacifico into the hot sauce, and the volcanic mix foamed its way to the top of the glass. A smile of thirsty wonder and fear grew on my face.

***

The Michelada is now filed under Decisions I Don't Regret but Will Never Do Again. It joins a large company of other decisions I've made, though none quite so...burn-y.

That chile-laced decision came this past Saturday, not too long after a conversation I had with some friends about dreams. More than one of my friends expressed that they didn't really have a dream. The dream. The one that keeps them up at night. The one they doodled about in their 5th grade notebook or tattooed on their ankle during a missions trip to Mexico.

They're still searching for that rare breed of dream that seems more myth than reality. When you reach a certain age, it seems like we should have this figured out by now, right? Something that Bob Goff wrote in his book Love Does about doing and not just dreaming got me thinking: Maybe we don't find our dreams; maybe our dreams find us.

We can spend years, most of our lives, fretting over what our dreams could or should be. We stare at the article about clean water in Africa and try to suck the passion out of the screen and into our hearts. We think about TOMS Shoes and wish we would have thought of that idea first. We want to convince ourselves we should sell all of our stuff and live in the slums of India. Then we get honest with ourselves and think, I just don't want to do that.

In the meantime, we do nothing. We're too scared to step out into any endeavor because we don't have the proper passion, vision, or dream to justify it. What if I take that job, move to that place, volunteer for this organization, meet up with those people, and discover it's not the stuff dreams are made of?

We need to learn to simply do and be okay with the fact that it might not be our dream. In fact, we might hate it. But now we know it's something we don't want to do, and that's one step closer to clarity. On the other hand, we may discover we love it, but we have to take the chance to risk in the first place.

After moving to Philadelphia, I decided to teach in the inner city--not because of some mystical calling or childhood dream to be Sidney Poitier or Michelle Pfeiffer or Hilary Swank. I simply wanted to see what it was like. By the end of the year, I had experienced a class that had no heat in the winter, no air conditioning in the summer, mice crawling around the rafters, flying cockroaches, emotionally disturbed students who never took their meds and didn't have the proper support, broken kids from broken homes, but beautiful kids who somehow made me smile as much as they made me yell.

Ultimately, at the end of the year, I realized it wasn't for me. I don't regret that time at all--it was one more adjustment to the lenses of my life. I could see a bit clearer.

When we stop stalling in life while we wait on a magical phone call from Destiny or a telegram from the Dream Factory and we simply do something, we move in a positive direction. Even when we end up hating the thing we do. We scratch it off the list, we readjust, and we take the next step with one more piece of valuable knowledge under our belts.

Maybe we need to reframe how we think about dreams. Too many people I know have stumbled into their dreams rather than chased them down. This happens with jobs, relationships, and passions. It leads me to think that dreams are less a white whale that eludes us as we frantically search to capture and club it into submission. Dreams are more the aroma that rises and fills our nostrils while we cook something in our very own kitchen. They bubble up around us as we do the things we do.

We simply need the courage to step out and try something new every once in a while and the courage to walk away if we realize it's not for us. Slowly but surely, or perhaps out of nowhere one day, our dreams will find us even in places we didn't expect to meet.

***

The Michelada will haunt me for years to come, I suspect. I'll wake in the middle of the night fearing that my mouth and my entire digestive system are set ablaze. But I will not regret the decision to try it. The next time we go to Fonda, I'll have eleven drinks to choose from instead of twelve.

I like those odds.

***

I'd love to hear your stories of what you'd file under Decisions I Don't Regret but Will Never Do Again, or how you've come to discover what is or is not your dream.

What do ya got?

The Four Words That Almost Buried Me

I have all kinds of phrases I use on a daily basis. Some I've picked up from friends: "Holy rip." - to be used as an expression of surprise or awe, like during the opening sequence of Gravity. "Holy rip. This is amazing." Also to be used as an expression of disgust, like during the second half of Gravity. "Holy rip. This is not happening."

Some I've picked up from TV shows: "TREAT YO SELF." - to be used to justify spending money without any rational thought, but I usually just say this before I eat an obscene amount of ice cream.

Some I started to use ironically but have now become a legitimate part of my vocabulary: "That's cray." - I don't even notice it anymore; it's that normal.

There's another phrase I started to use, and it was a spinoff of the FML trend:

I hate my life.

It was supposed to be funny. I spill my drink on myself at work (which happens way more often than it should for an adult)--"I hate my life." I forget my keys in the house when I leave in the morning--"I hate my life." The episode of How I Met Your Mother that I'm watching online freezes, so I have to start the whole thing over and sit through the marathon of ads that CBS.com runs--"I hate my life."

You know. The struggle is real. First world problems. Hashtag something-or-other.

But then something strange started to happen. I was going through a rough season. I would go to sleep hoping that I could get to the next day as soon as possible and forget all my troubles. I would wake up not wanting to face the looming mountain ahead of me. I would leave my crowded work place, my crowded church, my crowded friend's living room and find some isolated spot--the bathroom, the porch, the parking lot--place my head in my hands, and tremble until the sorrow that had built up inside finally subsided. I would be driving down the highway when I felt like I had suddenly driven off the side of a bridge and slammed into the frigid arms of the Schuylkill River, and pain and regret swallowed me into blackness.

I would shake my head quickly, like I was trying to clear an Etch-a-Sketch, and found myself saying, every time:

I hate my life.

Those four words became more than catchphrase or a cute joke. They became my truth, my reality, the pen recording my past, the cell mate of my present, and the gatekeeper to my future.

I began to believe them--I really did hate my life. It didn't matter what good was happening. It didn't matter how successful I was. It didn't matter that I had friends who loved me. I hated my life--what power words can have to bury us in the dirt. What started as a joke began to shape itself into reality. I believed those words now. I lived in them. They clung to me like cold, wet clothing, and the more I said them, the more they stuck to my skin.

Sometimes, words may be the only key to unlock the chains other words have placed on us.

I fell under the dark enchantment of "I hate my life" for months before I began to snap out of the spell. Then I received an email from someone who had the power to make my chains heavier or to set me free. Here's what she wrote to me (edited to protect some of the more personal details):

This is what I want you to know--it gets better. One day at a time, you will make it through this...There's no quick fix to this. You're in shock. There's been a renting. Your life has been torn in two and no matter what happens now, you're not the same Paul you've always been. You will get back to being successful, but it's all going to look different, feel different because you're different.   

But that's the good news. When you're ready, you have the opportunity to build bigger dreams than the ones you've had--dreams you didn't know were possible before, dreams as big as the sky. I believe in you.

Winters like the one we've had this year on the east coast--this frigid, never-ending winter--remind me of the startling difference between having the sunlight fall on my face versus being under the shadow of clouds instead. It's the difference between treacherous ice and smooth paths, bone-deep chills and spirit-lifting warmth.

Those words thawed me out and brought me into a spring I desperately needed. They gave me a glimmer of green when the gray crept up to whisper death and despair. I didn't let go of them. I held them close. I let my heart slowly pump them out to every part of my ailing body until even my fingertips and my toes felt warm with them.

I will get better.

I will be okay.

I can build bigger dreams than the ones that have died.

I can dream dreams I didn't even dare to think about before.

I used to be buried alive, but I could feel the sun again. Now, when I lie down in bed, I want to stay up and dream. When I wake up, I can't wait for where the climb might take me that day. Slowly but surely, I've worked the old phrase out of my system and replaced it with one I intend to keep until I've sucked in my last breath:

I love my life.

***

Friends, let's bring life and hope and spring and warmth with our words. To others and to ourselves. And let's do it more often, yeah? It could be the difference between life and death. Thanks to all of you who have been committed to speaking life to me--I'm more grateful than you can know.